Vehicle owners are often charged for parking their vehicle in a parking lot owned by a provider of parking services or on the side of a street owned or maintained by a municipality. For example, Japanese Patents 406325294, 407249195, 041312700 and 02002175595 disclose different parking management systems. Generally, the price, or parking fee, charged for parking in a certain area is based on the amount of time a vehicle is parked. In some cases, a flat fee is charged for parking a certain number of hours, or days, in a parking lot or space. Cities and other municipalities often provide residents a parking permit for a certain fee that permits the resident to park adjacent the side of various streets in a designated area for a year.
Parking fees are also charged by parking lot providers and collected prior to a vehicle owner removing the vehicle from the parking lot. For instance, Japanese Patent 4096325294 discloses a parking management system that can be used by a parking lot provider. The disclosed system is configured to scan the length of a vehicle and, based on the sensed length, select an appropriate free parking space suitable for the length of the vehicle and provide the owner of the vehicle printed instructions to drive to the assigned parking space to park the vehicle. A parking ticket is also provided to the owner for use in paying the fee for parking his or her vehicle. When the vehicle owner is ready to remove his or her vehicle from the parking lot, the vehicle owner pays the parking fee by inserting the parking fee ticket into a parking ticket processor. The parking fee processor calculates the parking fee based on the amount of time the vehicle was parked in the parking lot. The system is configured to permit the vehicle to exit the parking lot after the parking fee is paid.
It is common also for parking to be provided along the side of a street adjacent the curb of the street. Often, cities and other municipalities offer parking along the side of a street for a fee that is charged by a parking meter. In all of these situations, the parking fee is calculated without regard to the size of the vehicle. As a result, owners of small vehicles normally pay the same amount to park in a parking lot or on a city lot as owners of large vehicles.
In many cities a lack of parking space and traffic congestion are significant problems. If drivers have incentives to drive smaller cars, the extent and severity of these problems can be reduced. If more people drove smaller cars, more cars could be parked in many lots and along many city streets. This may also result in an increase in parking fee revenues to the parking lot owner or municipality.